The Republic of East Shippensburg is a colossal, socially progressive nation, ruled by Jakobes with a fair hand, and remarkable for its keen interest in outer space, hatred of cheese, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, democratic population of 5.755 billion East Shippensburgians are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The enormous, liberal, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Education, Environment, and Healthcare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Jericho. The average income tax rate is 82.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The East Shippensburgian economy, worth 382 trillion Dollars a year, is highly specialized and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Tourism and Book Publishing. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 66,522 Dollars, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Gossip magazines have pictures of Jakobes sunbathing on the beach with political rivals, foreign policy is mostly just to smile and hope for the best, billion-Dollar sentient AI killbots roll through the streets dispensing hot dogs and T-shirts, and cigarettes are dead-cheap. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. East Shippensburg's national animal is the cockatoo, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

East Shippensburg is ranked 15,515^th in the world and 668^th in The North Pacific for Most Cultured, scoring 100 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.